Managing the magic of microbes: Jessica Green at TEDxPortland

Jessica -- aka "Thumper Biscuit" in roller derby circles -- is a professor at both the University of Oregon and the Santa Fe Institute. She's a TED Fellow whose current goal is to help people visualize the invisible world of microorganisms to foster a world full of buildings that limit infectious disease and maximize energy.

These are images of microorganisms.

The tiny form of life
that we can't see with our naked eye

viruses, bacteria and archaea.

They are the most abundant
and diverse organisms on Earth

and they cover
every nook and cranny of our body

our buildings and our cities.

Most of you when you think about microbes,

probably think about the bad ones.
Like MRSA, or HIV or anthrax.

But, the majority of microbes
are good for us.

Our bodies, just like any ecosystem,
rely on our microbes to survive.

Our microbes protect us
from germs and pathogens,

they allow us
to get nutrients from our food

and they also boost our inmune system.

And recent evidence suggests
that they even influence our moods,

our levels of stress
and anxiety and depression.

So, if you are feeling fantastic today, like I am,
you might want to thank your microbes.

And you might want to thank you mother
as well,because we get our --

the majority of our microbes come
from our mother when we are born

and we also get our microbes
from the food that we eat

and from the people
that we spend time with, our friends

and people on subways
if you are hi-fiving them

on the way down on the escalator --
and we also get our microbes

from our primary habitat which is buildings.

All of us are going to spend
at least 90% of our lives indoors

and while we are indoors,
we frequently -- continuosly come into contact

with microbes that we breathe in
and that we touch on surfaces.

Something that I've been interested in,

given how important microbes are
to our well-being,

is how we manage microbes in our buildings
where we spend so much of our time.

And to explain what I've learned in recent years
I'm going to make an analogy of a garden.

A microbial garden that is -- indoors!

So, our techniques for
gardening microbes indoors today,

loosely follow 4 basic rules.

The first rule is that you want to keep
all microbes out of your building,

you want to quarantine the building.

And we have modern buildings today
that are hermetically sealed,

and examples of this,
of the ways buildings have changed, is --

we now have operable windows

that are replaced
with elaborate air-conditioning systems

and filtration systems
that are designed to keep out

native microbes that are outdoors,

the ones that commonly grow on plants,

and live in the dirt,
and live in our waterways

and we don't want them
getting inside of our buildings.

And, the second rule, or principle,
is that we put doors on our buildings

and allow people to come inside buildings

and plant in our gardens,
what I'm refering to as invasive microbes.

And these are microbes that live on our bodies,
they are on our skin, they are in our mouth.

Every human being
that walks into a building, in one hour,

they contribute 37 million bacteria to the air.

That's as many bacteria as the number of people

that are currently living in the state of California.

And we contribute microbes to the air
by shedding directly from our own body

and we also kick up microbes from surfaces

that were left behind by other people
that were in the building.

Our third basic rule is to keep
a static environment for our garden.

So we keep a very narrow band
of temperature and relative humidity,

we don't allow for daily environmental changes
or seasonal changes indoors,

and we maintain
this thermal comfort zone for us,

because we want to be able
to hang out in our underwear

even if it's snowing outside, indoors.

But think about this
from the perspective of a microbe!

What we're doing
is creating an environment

that selects for what I think of
as an urban type of microbe

that really thrives living
in this homogeneous environment.

And the forth rule that we follow indoors,

is that we regularly want to kill
everything in the garden.

And we do this indoors by relentlessly using
anti-microbial cleaning products

and sterilizing surfaces indoors.

And when you think about this,
this is really a form of microbial genocide

because what we are doing is killing
the good microbes along with the bad.

So, if we had a vegetable garden outside,

we would never kill all the plants

because we wanted to get rid of one weed.

And that's effectively
what we are doing indoors

and when you clear out
a bunch of organisms from an ecosystem,

what you do is you make space
for weedy and fast growing organisms

to come and colonize those spaces,

because there's nothing there
to compete with them.

What are the consequences of this way
that we manage microbes indoors?

We don't know yet,
people are just starting to learn about this

but I'm willing to speculate
on what I think is happening.

Humans have been around
for hundreds of thousands of years

but this era of modern buildings
that are hermetically sealed,

environmentally constant,
cleaned on a very regular basis

this has been around
only for about 60 years.

And I believe what we are breeding indoors

or growing is a microbial monoculture.

And when you think about our bodies,
we probably haven't evolved

to be able to function very well
in this type of microbial environment.

And there's a lot of evidence
that has been published recently,

that suggests that many of the ways
of modern living may be affiliated

with the rise of antibiotic resistence
and the rise of autoinmune disorders

that we all face in the developed world,
like asthma and allergies.

I've recently been collaborating with
both biologists and architects,

including Brandon Bohanan and Charlie Brown
at the University of Oregon

to understand how building design impacts
the types of microbes that grow indoors.

And we recently conducted a study

at the Lillis Business Complex
of the University of Oregon --

this is what Lillis looks like
from the perspective of a human.

And this is, what it probably looks like,

from the perspective of a microbe
flying around the atmosphere.

This is an infrared image
that shows differences

in heat on the building and microbes
are known to be very sensitive to heat.

And this is what Lillis looks like
from the perspective of an architect.

So what we did on this building, is --

we were very interested in Lilis
because this is a silver LEED certified building

and we wanted to know,

"Does green building design
influence microbes in a positive or negative way?"

So, what we did was,
on the first floor of this building

we ran and operated
the building as it was designed.

And, what that meant was

we let outdoor air enter
the building through louvers.

And on the second floor of the building
we manipulated the way that it was operated,

and we forced air to go through
mechanical ventilation systems

before they reached the classroom --

or, all the classrooms that we studied.

So these are the results,
these are hot off the press,

this is data
that has never been shown before

we just got these results back last week.

What you are looking at is the first and
second floor of the Lillis Business Complex

and you'll see that there's
an indicator scale on this diagram

where the pink denotes air samples that we took

that had microbial DNA that looks very similar
to what's found in and on humans.

And the blue indicates air samples
with microbial DNA that looks very similar

to what you might find out outside,
for example in dirt.

And what you'll see is that on the first floor
of the building which is operated

according to these LEED standards where
air was coming in directly from outside

that air looks more like the outside

and on the second floor of the building,
the air looked very human-like.

So, these scientific results are intuitive

but they clearly show
that we do have some control

over the types of microbes
that we are growing indoors.

What does all this mean?

Today we have landscape architects
that design outdoor spaces

and grounds keepers
whose job is to maintain

these outdoor spaces
over long periods of time.

And the uncharted territory here
is thinking about microbes

in a new way
and understanding how to grow

the types of good microbes
that we want indoors,

so that we can train a new type of architect,
an interior landscape architect

who can design healthy indoor gardens

and we're also gonna need
a new flavour of building managers

that I am thinking of
as interior grounds keepers

that can help maintain
healthy buildings and healthy people.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)